


Restless Night

by Pinkperson1



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Angst, Gen, Insomnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29316885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinkperson1/pseuds/Pinkperson1
Summary: Squall is unable to sleep because he can't stop thinking about Laguna. Where will his mind take him and will he be able to handle the destination?
Kudos: 2





	Restless Night

Squall was lying in bed, but he was in such a state of mental agony as he was unable to drift off. Rinoa was beside him, her breaths signifying she was sleeping soundly. Squall could only twist and turn, tangling in the sheets as he was mentally assaulted by thoughts he had no control over. They were eating away at him. Driving him to the brink of madness with their ferocity and unyielding devastation.

He just couldn’t stop thinking about Laguna.

The man from the dream world. A clumsy oaf who had started out as the most pitiful soldier Squall had ever laid eyes on—and had later somehow stumbled into a life of national presidency. Someone who was trying to initiate some sort of bond with Squall that the young SeeD wasn’t too keen on reciprocating. After all, who was Laguna, anyway? Why should he try to get along someone who he had no interest in? So what if he had been in his head? Did that mean he owed the man something?

And yet there was something in particular that was keeping Squall up at night. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. There was something about the man that was oddly alluring, despite how absolutely ridiculous he was. It was like being drawn to a circus clown.

He couldn’t help but recall that statue he’d helped build at the Shumi Village. The inhabitants worshiped Laguna like he was Hyne himself and it was enough to leave Squall awestruck. Did they really admire someone like that? What was wrong with those creatures? Did they not have any other person to compare him to or something?

I mean, it was _Laguna_.

If only they had the opportunity to peer inside the man’s fractured mind. Perhaps if they saw Laguna’s body failing him upon merely approaching a woman, then he wouldn’t be so esteemed. What kind of soldier was afflicted with leg cramps when nervous anyway? And it didn’t make sense to Squall how someone so happy-go-lucky stressed out so much that he’d seize up like that. Was he really that unaccustomed with anxiety? What was up with that?

A statue...celebrating a man who seemed to get by on dumb luck. It was almost infuriating to Squall. He always found laid-back people grating to begin with, couldn’t stand people who didn’t take initiative, but Laguna was on a whole other level. Every time Squall went to Esthar to deliver that dreaded paperwork, Laguna would act like he hardly cared and would set it aside without even glancing at it, all while telling him to “chill”, that he’d “do it later.”

In the back of Squall’s mind an alarm began sounding, alerting him that he was treading on dangerous ground. He was thinking about the guy a little _too_ much. He was briefly distracted by Rinoa’s movement as she turned to her other side and adjusted the sheets. He should wake her up and get himself to stop thinking, the voice in the back of his head told him. But, against his better judgment, he ignored it as he found it almost invigorating dissecting Laguna in his head. It was like a challenging assignment where he had to figure out whether the man was an alien or not. Oddly satisfying, in a way. Besides, he didn’t want to be intrusive by disrupting her sleep.

Alright, maybe Laguna had one admirable trait at least. He seemed to be a very kind person. He did always ask Squall how he was doing and would ask him about his personal life. He seemed to listen to Squall with great interest, too. Like he actually cared about what happened in his mundane day-to-day life. And even when Squall lashed out at him, he never got offended or expressed anything resembling resentment. He just took it. However, this acceptance on Laguna’s end also served to further ignite Squall’s exasperation with him. He was just a little _too_ nice. It was like he was trying to piss him off with his do-gooder self sometimes.

But it wasn’t just the type of person Laguna was that was baffling to Squall. It was _who_ he was to him. Squall couldn’t help but notice how... _doting_...the man was towards him. It was like he was almost concerned about him at times. To anyone else it wouldn’t have seemed so strange, but Squall sensed there was more to it than that. He seemed to pay extra attention to Squall, and it was as though he actually liked him. But that couldn’t be it, because Squall was always abrasive towards Laguna. Even when he chewed out the president, seemingly every other time they spoke privately, the guy still smiled cheerfully. Took the verbal beating like a champ. And, okay, so Squall had been the one inside his head, but did that mean they needed to instigate some sort of friendship? No, Squall didn’t want that at all. Especially not with someone like Laguna. Someone who had a knack for triggering Squall’s antagonistic side.

_Laguna, Laguna, Laguna…_

Wasn’t that what those moombas had called Squall? Even those damned things seemed to put the man on a pedestal.

Okay, so Laguna was a nice guy...and a sensitive nice guy at that. He put others before himself when it really came down to it. The guy had a heart of gold, something even Squall would, albeit grudgingly, admit. But was being nice enough to make someone a truly great leader? Sure, he was charismatic as well...he more than made up for Squall’s lack of animation when the two of them were talking, that’s for sure. But all Squall could really focus on were the silly moments he’d witnessed. Like Laguna complaining that his nose itches right before a battle, or him somehow losing an important key over and over again. Who picked him as a squad leader anyway? In his opinion, Kiros was better suited to that role between the two. Now _there_ was a guy with some reasoning skills, Squall thought as he recalled the man’s often sarcastic responses to Laguna’s mystifying nature.

It wasn’t just Squall and Kiros who recognized that Laguna was an oddball either. His wife, Raine, had also been sharply criticizing towards him. She seemed to be frustrated by his childishness, based on what Squall saw of her.

Squall’s train of thought came to a halt as he thought back to those moombas. He frowned deeply, pressure mounting inside his skull. Were they really calling Squall Laguna? Why was that? He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, at the D-District Prison, but now he felt baffled by the meaning behind it. _Was_ there a meaning? Did they sense that he’d been in Laguna’s mind or something? Did they simply confuse him for the guy? Was it because they looked kind of similar? Similar…

They looked similar?

Squall stiffened as the gears in his head began to turn, his analytical side clicking away. Without warning, he began dissecting every image of Laguna flashing in his mind. The man’s long black hair, his abysmally bright green eyes, his lopsided smile. No, none of that pointed towards any resemblance to Squall. They didn’t look alike at all, he tried to convince himself, ignoring the fact that he sometimes felt like he was staring into some kind of distorted mirror when he spoke to Laguna. He fought the urge to scramble out of bed and scrutinize every inch of his face.

He tried hard to ignore those pangs of recognition he’d felt when he first saw Laguna in the dream world. That odd out of body experience where he’d almost felt like he was spying on some alternate, demented version of himself. Maybe it was the way that Laguna would battle with himself in his head, talking to himself for far too long, forgetting that he was in his own little world...it was almost like...almost like...how old was Laguna again?

_No...no, no, no…_

Squall covered his face with his hands as cold panic made him break into a sweat. Was he becoming unhinged from thinking so much about Laguna? Was he totally coming apart at the seams? Was he really even hinting at a possible _relation_ with Laguna? There was no way. No way in hell. His father would more likely be a moogle than Laguna. They were nothing alike. No similarities at all. He was just overthinking like Rinoa said he tended to do. Yeah, that was it.

Squall actually chuckled a little, a trace of hysteria in his laughter. Laguna...his father. Man, that was a good one. A real knee slapper if he said so himself. If this was the universe’s way of saying ‘fuck you’ to him, it truly must hate his guts. To give him a father like Laguna would be the cruelest joke ever. And besides, there was no way he had a living father. He’d lived in an orphanage, hadn’t he? And Laguna wouldn’t have left him at an orphanage. He would have gone out of his way to find him and pluck him out of such a depressing place, wouldn’t he?

... _Wouldn’t_ he?

Squall trembled as hot tears began to trickle down the sides of his face. He wasn’t seriously believing this, was he? He wanted to rebuke himself for not falling asleep when he should have. Maybe he should have woken Rinoa up, distracted himself by talking with her about—anything other than Laguna. Or maybe taken some sleeping pills, even gobbled up the whole bottle if killing himself would have helped. Anything to have avoided allowing this to transpire.

It would have been better than finding out like this. On his own. He wished he wasn’t believing it...he really wished to Hyne he wasn’t. But it was like all of the clues sprinkled evilly across the universe were being gathered in Squall’s mind and he suddenly knew he couldn’t deny it. Because it _had_ to be true.

Laguna Loire was his father.

An image of Laguna popped up in his mind, with the man awkwardly telling him that he had something to talk about with him once everything was over.

“No…” Squall whimpered as Rinoa continued snoring softly beside him, undisturbed and unaware of his turmoil.


End file.
